About the Author J. D. Santucci (a.k.a. "Tuch") began his railroading career in 1978 as a trainman on the Missouri Pacific. After a round of lay-offs in 1985, Tuch embarked on a railroad odyssey, working in many different situations for different roads. This column tries to explain some of the nuts and bolts of the job and also demonstrates what we have to deal with on a regular basis within and without the industry. Tuch currently works through freights out of Chicago for Canadian National/Illinois Central. ©1999, 2003-2007 JD Santucci. Logo ©2002 The Railroad Network. By J.D. Santucci

January 14, 2003
This is going to be an unusual piece as it deals with the presence of the Louisville & Nashville in Northwest Indiana and how their presence waned. It will also explain how the MoPac assumed operations over an open and active rail line. This transaction was quite unusual for its time being long before the short line and regional railroad movement of the mid and latter 1980’s. There is going to be a considerable amount of background and history involved to tell this story. In other words, I am going to have to go a long way to get there from here. It will take multiple columns to accomplish the telling of this entire story otherwise, it would be extremely long. So let’s begin this journey.

In 1967, the Missouri Pacific was given approval to take 40% control of the Chicago & Eastern Illinois Railroad. This transaction was fought for several years by the Illinois Central, Monon, Cotton Belt (St. Louis Southwestern) and Louisville & Nashville Railroads. In the end though, the L&N gained from this takeover while the other contesting roads were turned away with nothing. The following year the L&N was conveyed the Evansville Division of the C&EI as a condition of Missouri Pacific’s acquisition of the line. This gave the L&N a badly needed direct route into Chicago. The Evansville Division included all trackage south of Woodland Jct to Evansville, IN including all branches. MoPac had operated this line as the Evansville Division including its own timetable for about a year after assuming control of the C&EI.

Along with the physical plant L&N also acquired a portion of the C&EI’s fleet of locomotives and rolling stock, track machinery as well as other railroad related equipment and vehicles.

The C&EI operated as a unit of MoPac retaining its name, with their initials appearing inside the MoPac buzz saw emblem instead of "Missouri Pacific Lines." MoPac did not gain full ownership of the C&EI for several years, but did maintain controlling interest. This was the main reason for the C&EI name surviving the merger for so many years. C&EI as a corporate identity disappeared completely in October 1976. There are still some former C&EI freight cars operating with C&EI "buzz saws" and CEI reporting marks either clearly showing having never been changed to MP, or bleeding through patch jobs that obliterated them so many years ago.

While gaining a direct route into Chicago, L&N did not gain a share of ownership of the Chicago & Western Indiana, an important route which was essentially devolving into a paper railroad. While the CWI did run local freight jobs to handle on line industries, their commuter passenger train operations had ceased to operate three years previously in 1965.

The L&N also did not gain a share of the Belt Railway of Chicago who shared common management with the CWI. A stake in the Belt was strategic as it would offer the L&N preferred rated on switching charges for cars interchanged through the Belt for forwarding and connection to other railroads in the Chicago Terminal as well as to L&N from their Chicago connections. In that era the Belt was not the autonomous operation it is today. Owner railroads were offered a better switching rate than non-owners using the line, there was no negotiating rates like today. Calculated into the switching charges were the haulage fees for using the BRC main tracks to and from Clearing Yard, yarding fees and humping fees.

The powers that be in Louisville needed to develop a strategy to gain ownership in the Belt and CWI. They focused towards the Monon. The L&N really needed the Monon’s route into Chicago like Oscar Meyer needs more hot dogs. In the grand scheme of things, the Monon was really nothing more than a parallel line to the L&N’s former C&EI route into Chicago. Acquisition of the Monon would give them a greater share of the line haul and revenue for the coal that originated on the L&N destined for US Steel’s Gary Works. Prior to the Monon acquisition, they fed these trains to the Pennsylvania and then Penn Central at Louisville who forwarded them to the EJ&E in Schererville, IN. The only thing the L&N really wanted were the shares of ownership Monon had in the Belt and the CWI. They needed and required the Monon’s shares of both to gain a cost effective advantage in Chicago.

The Monon was essentially a regional railroad whose entire physical plant was operated within the state of Indiana, hence the slogan "The Hoosier Line." Monon’s corporate name for years was the Chicago, Indianapolis & Louisville. This was dropped in favor of its Monon nickname in the post war years under the leadership of railroad legend John Barriger. At New Albany, IN the Monon crossed the Ohio River reaching into Louisville via the Southern Railway and Kentucky & Indiana Terminal Railroad. It accessed Chicago and made its connections via the CWI and BRC. Trackage between Hammond and State Line Tower on the Indiana/Illinois border was actually owned by the CWI and called the Monon Track and later the L&N track. From State Line north it was an all CWI route.

The Monon System formed a giant X at Monon where it’s other lines, the routes between Indianapolis and Monon and Monon and Michigan City joined. It was a successful operation, but pretty much at the mercy of its connections at either end for life supporting bridge traffic. With L&N having its own route into Chicago via the C&EI, little bridge traffic would come from them. While Southern used the Monon for some, the lion’s share of their traffic moved via the Penn Central between Cincinnati and Chicago. This was of course, before Penn Central collapsed and almost deteriorated into non-existence. Seeing the handwriting on the wall, the folks in Central Indiana took heart when the L&N came courting.

In 1971 L&N and Monon were officially hitched. A major and prolonged battle with the Milwaukee Road over trackage rights between Bedford, IN and Louisville, KY as a condition to the merger took place. Nonetheless, L&N gained their badly needed shares of ownership of the CWI and BRC. They had to allow the Milwaukee access to the railroad between the above named points, but still got what they really sought, better and lower cost access to the rest of the railroad world through the Chicago gateway. Had they fought off the Milwaukee and won, it would have been gravy. But the L&N got what they really wanted. As an owner of CWI, the L&N gained lower trackage rights fees, a lower per car switching charge at BRC’s Clearing Yard and a return on investment.

In the years following the Monon merger, L&N began to basically gut and loot the Monon. Much of the through business was diverted to the C&EI route over a period of years. By the end of the L&N before they were merged into the Seaboard System, the only scheduled through trains to operate daily on the former Monon were numbers 290 and 291 between Louisville and Chicago. The required coal trains to US Steel’s Gary Works continued to operate as well. More often than not, these trains would turn back at Dyer with the empties from the EJ&E after delivering the loads. On occasion if there were no empties awaiting return to the mines, the crew would run caboose lite to South Hammond and tie up. Also as required, potash trains between Chicago and Delphi were operated and on line elevators originated unit grain trains.

L&N was starting to look at opportunities to reduce operating costs and the duplication in the Chicago Terminal. L&N had a stake in Yard Center with MoPac crews actually handling all the switching chores. And being that most of L&N’s trains operated via the C&EI, it only seemed logical to consolidate operations there. A plan was hatched in the latter 70’s to eliminate the former Monon’s South Hammond Yard. South Hammond was not the most efficient set up in railroading. It was bisected by 173rd Street which meant that all tracks had to be cut to clear this crossing. The yard lay on both sides of this crossing.

Monon Sub (what the line was now called) road crews were not allowed to operate north of South Hammond Yard. Yard crews had to make the transfer of cars from inbound trains to the Indiana Harbor Belt and Belt Railway of Chicago. And southbound cars were hauled back by these same yard crews, made up into the outbound trains which the road crews operated back to Lafayette, Bloomington and Louisville. Yard crews also operated all potash trains that came from connections in Chicago to South Hammond where road crews took over.

South Hammond crews also handled all industry work in Hammond and Munster. While there were only two regular assigned jobs at South Hammond in its latter days of operation, there was an extra board full of guaranteed Engineers and Trainmen. The guarantees were the result of the merger protection required under the Monon/L&N merger. There were also two protected Hostler assignments at South Hammond. In an attempt to try to run these guys off the property, L&N decided to make both the hostling positions night jobs and gave them lousy days off.

By this point in time, other segments of the Monon had been pretty well dried up. The line between its namesake city of Monon and Michigan City had lost its importance. By the end of the 70’s this line had retrenched from Michigan City now only operating as far north as Medaryville, IN. Little, if any through freight traffic was being handled and mostly local industry work supported the line. Local traffic in Michigan City was handed over to Chessie System subsidiary Chicago, South Shore & South Bend. The line between Monon and Indianapolis was also being dried up. After the CSX merger, local traffic around Indianapolis was conveyed to the Chessie System and the line was eventually abandoned between Indiana’s Capitol City and Delphi.

In 1978, the L&N and its parent company Seaboard Coast Line along with other siblings Georgia Railroad, Clinchfield and Atlantic & West Point melded into a homogenous operating name of "The Family Lines Rail System." Each unit within Family Lines kept its corporate name, but standards began to be established for the company to streamline functions, standardize operations and reduce costs. Like its fellow Family Lines cousins, L&N itself had become a set of white, eight inch letters on the sides of gray locomotives with yellow and red trim that said "Family Lines System". After Chessie System and Seaboard Coast Line Industries, the parent company of The Family Lines merged in 1981, more changes on the Monon took place.

Two reprieves for the Monon came in 1981. The first being when Amtrak began operating the daily Hoosier State (trains 318/317 in the Amtrak timetable, 217/218 in L&N and later, Seaboard timetables) between Chicago and Indianapolis. These trains used a Monon routing between Air Line Junction in Munster (the connection to Conrail’s SC&S Branch) and Ames, IN where the line connected to Conrail’s Crawfordsville Secondary Line. Amtrak pumped money for track improvements into the line, but the train’s route bypassed Hammond and the slow, road crossing dotted and deteriorated track between State Line Tower and South Hammond. It also missed a strategic point along the line. Perhaps things might have been different for the route if the train used the entire Monon route through Northwest Indiana.

The second reprieve occurred when a fatal collision/derailment occurred on Conrail’s Danville Secondary. The Milwaukee had trackage rights on this Conrail line. The derailment resulted in hazardous material release that killed the Conductor of Milwaukee Road train 204 and also several motorists on the parallel US Rt. 41. Motorists drove into the cloud of toxic vapors unaware of what was happening. The Danville Secondary was closed for months after this episode and all Milwaukee Road trains to and from Louisville had to detour over the Monon between Hammond and Louisville. These detours required pilots on all trains and meant all those hardly working Engineers and Conductors on the South Hammond extra boards got gainful and well paying work every day for months. L&N got a break on this as the Milwaukee Road had to pay all costs for the pilots. The Milwaukee also had to pay L&N the special derailment detour rate as well. This rate is preset by the American Association of Railroads to assure that one railroad does not gouge another during a time of crisis. (Gee, would they really do that?) It is much lower than what most railroads negotiate between themselves for trackage rights fees. Even though the rates were lower, the L&N was still making money moving these trains.

Family Lines planners used the resources of newly merged parent companies of what was now CSX Corporation to make other changes on the Monon. There was now a big push being put on to eliminate South Hammond Yard and all the crews based there.

L&N had been attempting for several years to gain trackage rights on the Grand Trunk Western between Maynard in Munster where the two lines crossed and Thornton Jct in South Holland where the former C&EI and GTW crossed and connected. Neighbors in South Holland and rail labor fought this attempt. After several court proceedings, the reroute was allowed. In early 1981, construction was begun on a new connection to be located in the southwest quadrant at Maynard. This connection would allow the direct facing point movement of trains off the Monon and onto the Grand Trunk and vice versa.

At first, hand operated switches were placed into service. Eventually, power switches were installed and as well as all the other necessary hardware to fashion a new interlocking. This improvement allowed trains to proceed from one line to the other without having to stop and line the switches between the two routes. This statement is made in theory of course. It was not unusual to see a train stopped at Maynard patiently waiting for permission and later once installed and placed into service, signal indication to enter the South Bend Sub of the GTW. Control of the new plant was given to the Grand Trunk Dispatcher who was located in Battle Creek, MI at that time.

At the same time, a new connection was being built on the MoPac at 162nd Street just north of Thornton Jct. While there had long been a connection in place between the MoPac and GTW, there was no way for trains coming off the wye to enter the MoPac main tracks. All trains had to enter the yard at Yard Center. The new connection at 162nd Street would now allow just that. And south bound trains coming off the MoPac rails could crossover, enter the wye, swing around and reach GTW rails. Crossovers between the two main tracks on the MoPac were also built and installed as part of this project.

In early September of 1981, the first Monon train operated via the new route. This effectively eliminated South Hammond Yard. It did not however, eliminate the customers that remained on the line and their need for rail service. This is where the MoPac came into play. In an unusual arrangement, as part of the big cut over to Yard Center, L&N contracted with the MoPac to handle the industry switching on the Monon Sub between Hammond and Munster. This arrangement was to the dismay of all the L&N South Hammond Terminal crews.

The next change came in late 1982. US Steel coal trains were routed off the Monon and its connection to the EJ&E at Dyer, IN. The new route for these trains was via the Chessie System from Cincinnati to Gary, IN. Chessie had an interchange there with the EJ&E directly across from "the J’s" Kirk Yard, which sits adjacent to US Steel’s Gary Works.

There were several active industries regularly using rail service including a Scott Paper warehouse and distribution center, the Hammond Times newspaper, a La-Z-Boy distribution center, a lumber yard and a printing press. Pepsi Cola had a plant on the line as well. This plant received sugar and corn syrup by rail, but perpetual poor service being offered by both L&N and Conrail ran them off to the trucks.

L&N Engineers from South Hammond were sent over to Yard Center and placed onto the bottom of the MoPac extra board. Conductors did not come over for quite some time following this move. Needless to say, there were hard feelings and quite the legal battle began. At first, some six or seven Engineers were sent across the border. This got me out of the roundhouse and onto the Engineer’s extra board. A few more Engineers followed a few months later.

L&N Engineers were demanding their seniority be dovetailed into our list. This would mean they would cut right in with their original dates from the Monon and L&N and go ahead of MoPac Engineers with dates below theirs. It goes without saying, but I mention it just the same, we were not going to stand for this. The Monon guys were contending they were following their work. They had a total of four regular jobs and two of those were the protected hostling assignments. We had all sorts of jobs without the Monon business, but had they been granted their way, we would have lost out to them and been displaced. Our BLE division offered up a settlement to make the Monon Engineers a permanent part of out seniority roster, but they wanted far too much and we would not relinquish all of our rights on their behalf.

Prior to the cessation of operations there, the South Hammond crews did not block up the outbound 291 train. They simply switched out any industry cars from the inbound BRC transfer run (which included cars picked up from the IHB enroute) and married up the cars received from BRC, IHB and industries and made the train ready to head south. The same situation occurred with the northbound 290 train. The train arrived pretty well blocked. Industry cars were set out at South Hammond and the transfer crew took the train north setting out the IHB cars enroute.

Quite often, the transfer crew on 290 would set out a couple of engines from their locomotive consist at Clearing Yard for a southbound L&N train that operated over the C&EI. This train, 795 that operated between Chicago and Nashville, originated at Clearing Yard and operated via the C&EI routing. When the Monon trains were diverted over to Yard Center in 81, the BRC and IHB business was simply added to the existing transfer jobs MoPac used daily to connect with these two railroads. 290 tied up at Yard Center and 291 went on duty at Yard Center. This method would change in two years.

MoPac yard crews began to block the Monon business for the outbound 291 train instead of it being "mine run" to Lafayette where it was then reclassified. Auto parts from Ford’s Chicago Heights Stamping Plant now began to move on this train. Being that L&N switched the Ford assembly plant in Louisville, the parts for this plant were moving on the former C&EI routing. With the Monon train operating directly to Louisville, the decision was made to remove the Ford parts from 791, a Yard Center to Nashville train and add them to 291. This was a very logical move. With 291 now being blocked at Yard Center, the train made a faster run to Louisville and the parts moved in a much more timely fashion.

Despite the battling over the job rights and the like, I became friends with a couple of the Monon guys. It was very strange to have a guy like Ed "Moon" Mullens with some forty plus years on the railroad working as my Fireman. Ed was a nice guy and showed me a few tricks. He gave me a boatload of old timetables and rulebooks from the Monon and L&N, told me all sorts of interesting stories about his career and stories about the Monon and L&N. He also made mention of getting to meet Monon CEO John Barriger. He had great respect for the man. Needless to say, he along with all these other guys had nothing but total disdain for the L&N.

Another of their Engineers was Clyde Coble who was an Assistant Local Chairman with the BLE on the Monon. Clyde fired for me on numerous occasions and we discussed their seniority issues at length. We also discussed other union and railroad dealing on ours and other properties. Clyde had a boatload of knowledge about various happenings involving Conrail and its formation.

I could see the Monon men’s point about the seniority issue, I just could not agree with much of it. They were only following their work, not ours. If they succeeded in getting all their seniority, they would be taking our work, at our yard, away from us. This was not going to happen. At least two thirds of the Yard Center Engineers would be adversely affected had the Monon men been given all their seniority at our terminal.

What was proposed was allotting them spots on our roster permanently. They would get the 7,14,21,28 and 35 spots forever, until the last Monon man retired. When their number one man retired from the 7 spot, their number two man in our number 14 spot would move up to the 7 spot. Their number three guy would jump to the 14 spot and so on. In getting these positions, they would give up their wage guarantees and those on the MoPac roster displaced by the Monon guys would then gain them. This set up would create an entire list of adversely affected men and women on the MoPac roster. In my case, I would have immediately lost about five spots in seniority with this arrangement. It very possibly would have had me furloughed for a while as a result. The Monon guys rejected this proposal opting to fight for all their seniority. It was a fight they would almost certainly lose.

In the meantime, with the transferring of the Monon trains to Yard Center, the Hammond Local was born. Beginning with the first Tuesday after the first 290/291 trains began operating into and out of Yard Center, the Hammond local became a twice a week run. It was normally assigned a single Geep for power, oftentimes an L&N unit. Normally, the train had about ten or twelve cars or so and a caboose.

MoPac and L&N had a motive power arrangement that called for several locomotives to be assigned by the L&N to Yard Center for captive yard service. L&N sent a variety of GP7’s and 9’s (many of C&EI heritage) along with some SW1500 and MP15 switchers for use at Yard Center. The switchers were normally used at the south end of the yard as they were somewhat quieter than the Geeps. This appeased the neighbors who had decided to build homes right next to the railroad and then bitch and moan about the noise. The Geeps were normally free runners used on all other jobs except for service on the Chicago Heights Terminal Transfer Railroad (CHTT) in Chicago Heights. The L&N had no stake in the CHTT so their power was not allowed to work the line other than in transfer service on the Ford Run.

For most of the first year, a regular crew worked the Hammond Local. It was almost always exclusively MoPac crews. On occasion, a former South Hammond Engineer might catch the job off the extra board. I didn’t work this job for about the first couple of months it was on. Finally, I got my first chance.

With this we will end part one of this lesson. In the second part we will actually take a ride on the local. I will present the method of our operation and discuss various aspects of the job.

For an upcoming project I am doing extensive research. I am seeking the assistance of men and women with experience in the operation of remote control locomotives. It can be in any type of service ranging from class one railroad to industrial contract switching or steel mill operations, be your experiences brief or extensive, I want to hear from all of you that I can. I will present all those who respond a questionnaire dealing with their experiences in RCO service. All names of the respondents and their employers and locations will be kept strictly confidential.

And so it goes.